Electrical devices which make use of thermoelectric effects are well-known, and include devices which rely on physical effects including the Seebeck effect (electrical currents generated by temperature differences in junctions of dissimilar materials), the Peltier effect (emitting and absorbing of heat caused by electrical current flowing through junctions of dissimilar materials), and the Thomson effect (emitting or absorbing of heat by a current-carrying electrical conductor with a temperature gradient). The coefficients of these effects are related. Physically, these effects involve energy interchange between charge carriers and thermal phonons in the materials.
An example of a practical application of thermoelectric properties of materials is a Peltier refrigerator, which uses the Peltier effect to create a heat pump at the junction of two dissimilar materials. The Peltier refrigerator offers the benefits of small size, flexible shape, and lack of circulating fluids. Except for specialized uses which require such advantages, however, current Peltier refrigerators suffer from poor efficiency when compared against conventional vapor-compression fluid (reverse Rankine cycle) refrigerators. Fluid refrigerators typically exhibit effective efficiencies in the order of 50%, whereas the thermoelectric junctions of Peltier refrigerators typically achieve effective efficiencies in the order of 10%.
Other practical applications of thermoelectric properties of materials include heaters and thermoelectric power generators, and battery chargers. Such devices are typically based on variations in the configuration of the dissimilar materials and the polarity of the electrical current. For example, a Peltier refrigerator, being essentially a thermoelectric energy converter, can be configured to serve as a heater by reversing the current flow. In general, however, present thermoelectric devices typically exhibit poor conversion efficiencies. Nevertheless, they are being used in several special situations and many more are envisaged should the efficiency increase significantly.